Regions and Powers V

 

Continuing with our precis of Buzan and Waver's REGIONS AND POWERS... we come to the discussion of sub-Saharan Africa.

One finds a good summary of their view of the security climate in that vast area here:

"[After decolonization] the African state system mostly did not follow the Westphalian model into military rivalry and interstate war. Instead, it developed three almost postmodern features: (1) a loose ideology of pan-Africanism; (2) a continental institution, the OAU, which at an early stage pre-empted what could have been a drift toward rival territorial claims by institutionalizing the rule that there would be no forceful changing if the postcolonial boundaries ...; (3) a willingness to experiment with a variety of regional institutions." 

The phrase "the Westphalian model" refers to the principles of the Peace of Westphalia that took in effect in Europe in 1648 at the end of the Thirty Years' War.  It formalized the end of feudalism, and made the Holy Roman Empire a near irrelevance for most of the remainder of its run. The basic Westphalian idea is that the dominant institution is the nation-state. The theatre of public affairs is dominated by states with distinct territory and agreed upon boundaries, agreeing more-or-less to live and let live with each other and -- so that this could work -- agreeing on the toleration of religion minorities within the abode of each. [Psst, the protected minorities had to be Christian. This bit was simply a truce between Rome and more northern religious centers.]  

The OAU reference in the above passage is the Organization of African Unity. It was created in 1963 and continued until 2002, when as Buzan and Waever were working on this book it changed some of its internal rules and its name to the simpler African Union (AU).  Buzan and Waever use the older three-letter initials throughout.

Certainly the system that the OAU/AU has tried to create has SOME similarity to what the framers of the Westphalian peace were trying to do.  The rule that there should be no forceful changing of boundaries surely sounds like the Westphalian peace. But our authors are saying that beneath the surface Africa is very different from the categorization it inherited from its post-Westphalia colonizers. 

Some of the differences are outlined in the following terms a few pages later: "[The local players include] a variety of non-state actors in control of significant territorial, economic and military assets. Interweaved among these are NGOs, UN humanitarian and peacekeeping operations of various sorts, mafias, firms, mercenary companies and even a few postcolonial garrisons. Because African states are so weak, and because there are so many others actors at play within and alongside the state, intervention by outside actors mostly occurs at the sub-state rather than at the interstate level." 

In these circumstances, Buzan and Waever discern only one regional security complex in the strict sense outlined in their theory and illustrated in our earlier posts on the subject. That one is the southern African complex, dominated by South Africa, both before and since apartheid. There are two protocomplexes that seem to be struggling to become a security complex -- one at the horn of Africa, the other to its west centered on Nigeria. 

What can we say about superpower involvement in Africa, and the consequences for its complex and its proto-complexes of the end of the Cold War? The paradigm case here is the war between UNITA and MPLA in Angola. Both UNITA and MPLA were in their origin anti-colonial guerilla groups. Angola became independent very late in the broader timeline of decolonization, not until 1975, and the two groups thereafter went after one another for dominance. That "sub-state" rather than interstate warfare the above passage referenced. 

Angola has always been throughout its independent existence part of the security complex defined by South Africa. It long called itself a "frontline state" -- the frontline being its part in the war against apartheid. Our authors cite one scholarly estimate that between 1975 and 1987 the USSR spent four billion dollars in propping up the MPLA. Then they write, "With the ending of the Cold War, outside interest in Africa's security issues has declined. Russian and Chinese military interest has more-or-less disappeared.  The USA remains generally at arm's length, though it does support Uganda and Ethiopia against the militant Islamic regime in Khartoum and played a role in the coming to power of Kabila in Zaire/DR Congo."    

Khartoum is of course the capital of Sudan and is the point where Africa, as these authors use the term, merges into the Middle East. The US supports Uganda and Ethiopia against Khartoum because doing so helps secure the trade routes offshore of the horn, into and out of the Red Sea. Aside from that, outside interference has waned since the days when sub-state parties could be used as proxies for the great bipolar Big Picture conflict. 

Although they do not say so directly, our authors seem to believe that over time the proto-complexes will turn into fully developed security complexes, making for a total of three such in Africa, and that the continent could yet settle down into a Westphalia model.  What is more, they seem to think that would be a positive development from a range of points of view internal and external to the continent.  

I plan only two more posts on REGIONS AND POWERs -- one on the Americas and the other on the Europes,  returning to the broad theoretic level. within the last of those. 

And, yes, "the Europes" is their phrasing, not mine.